Why the 21st century Flutes are not made of wood, what happen?

[YoungFlutist]

Hey guys, what happen? in the time of Haydn and bach, the flutes ware made of wood, but now, another material, why?

[pied_piper]

Progress. If you build a better flute, they will come. That's what Theobald Boehm did and the rest is history.

Mostly, the reason was that the wood flutes of the baroque and classic era did not project all that well and chromatic note fingering was awkward. They also had difficulty competing with other orchestral instruments. Boehm developed a new fingering system and started building flutes from silver. The Boehm flute was then able to be better heard and they gradually replaced the simple system wood flutes.

Boehm wrote a book about his new flute system. It's highly recommended reading:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Th ... etl-gE4PAC